Northwestern University Helps Students Deal with Bounded Rationality while Solving Problems The engineering school at Northwestern University is addressing the need to develop students problem-solving and critical-thinking skills. It has created a course for all new engineering students that requires them to solve challenges with no clear solutions. Students work in teams to design and build devices to help individuals with disabilities perform simple tasks. Examples include equipping a stroke survivor to crochet with one hand or a partially paralyzed shooting victim to don tight support stockings. Or to make workout gear or bottle openers for people with only one working arm. Each team is given $100 to use in any fashion needed to complete the project. The course, Design Thinking and Communication, helps students realize that critical thinking and problem solving require resilience and calculated risk taking. Professors want students to learn that problem solving entails a process of struggling through challenging problems. Students note that learning to ask others for help is a building block of resiliency. They also learn that communication among team members is a key skill for solving complex problems. As in the real world, they do not always find a solution. But the students are not graded on whether they solve the problem. Instead, they are graded on how well they communicate and work with patients, therapists and teammates, and how well they execute the design process, approach problems and present their results at an end-of-term design expo, according to The Wall Street Journal. Students also come to appreciate the value of failure. Learning from failure is new to most students, and in this case, it means having to face people in need of a solution. Student Jocelyn Dong recalled her project, in which the team tried to help a stroke victim resume her hobby of crocheting. The woman said the teams solution was useless. The team reframed the problem. It came up with the idea to create an elevated wheelchair armrest that enabled her to prop her weak arm higher, extending her reach. The patient loved the concept! Not only did it help her to crochet, but it also provided the ability to reach objects from grocery shelves that had been beyond her reach. Dong told a Wall Street Journal reporter, It was one of the greatest moments Ive had so far in engineering.20 YOUR THOUGHTS?

What is your reaction to the description of this engineering course? What unique aspects of the course help students develop their problem-solving skills? Why does problem solving require resilience?